Random killings are rare in the Lehigh Valley but terrorizing

CHRIS SHIPLEY, THE MORNING CALL

There is no obvious evidence that a man and woman were gunned down just hours earlier at Greenleaf and Sixth streets in Allentown. The double homicide happened about 4 a.m. Sunday, police said, and was one of three random killings undertaken by a trio of men that night.

There is no obvious evidence that a man and woman were gunned down just hours earlier at Greenleaf and Sixth streets in Allentown. The double homicide happened about 4 a.m. Sunday, police said, and was one of three random killings undertaken by a trio of men that night. (CHRIS SHIPLEY, THE MORNING CALL)

"All these people have in common is that they were at locations where Mr. West happened to be when he wanted to kill people," Lehigh County First Deputy District Attorney Steven Luksa said. "They did nothing to offend him, nothing to disrespect him, nothing to set him off.

"It's a scary thought that a person kills for no apparent reason," he said.

Such random murders are quite rare — only 4 percent of solved murders in 2013 were committed by strangers for no known reason, according to the FBI. But they have a terrorizing effect on communities, much the same as school shootings and sniper attacks.

DOUG MILLS, AP

Fairfax County, Va., police search for clues in a sniper shooting outside a Home Depot in Falls Church, Va. in this Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002, file photo.

Fairfax County, Va., police search for clues in a sniper shooting outside a Home Depot in Falls Church, Va. in this Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002, file photo. (DOUG MILLS, AP)

Quick arrests of the three men who police say were in the SUV alleviated some of the fear, but such crimes can unmoor people in a way that targeted acts don't.

"When there's a reason, such as a conflict between the perpetrator and the victim, we can understand that. But when a killing is done at random, it heightens the fear factor," said Peter Langman, an Allentown psychologist who has studied and written books about school shooters.

"Similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, people feel increased fear and heightened anxiety. They become hypervigilant, always looking for signs of danger," he said.

That fear was felt on a national scale in 2002, when the "Beltway Sniper" gunned down victims in and around Washington, D.C. Starting Oct. 2 that year, 10 people were killed and three wounded in a series of random shootings over three weeks.

Among the victims were a woman leaving Home Depot, a man mowing grass, a taxi driver pumping gas and a woman at a bus stop. Each was killed by a single, perfectly placed bullet.

"There was no pattern, and the victims were from all walks of life," said Tod Burke, a professor of criminal justice at Radford University in Virginia who profiled the shooter for law enforcement officials. "That left people wondering if anyone was safe."

John Allen Muhammad, 42, at the time of his arrest, was convicted in the killings and executed in 2009. Lee Boyd Malvo, his 17-year-old accomplice, is serving life in prison.

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli called West a "serial killer" and a "dangerous individual."

"He needs to be locked away in a cage," Morganelli said.

'In cold blood'

Perhaps because they are rare, random killings are hard even for prosecutors to forget.

Morganelli's first homicide case as a Northampton County prosecutor in 1992 involved a troubled 22-year-old man who killed for no reason.

Todd Bercaw was upset after a fight with his girlfriend, so he killed the first person who crossed his path. That happened to be Joseph Thompson Jr., a pastor who had just stepped out of his Palmer Township home and was headed to a local shrine to reflect on his Sunday sermon.

In a videotaped confession, Bercaw said the pastor greeted him, he greeted him back and then he shot him.

"Killed him in cold blood," Morganelli recalled.

Bercaw was later sentenced to life in prison.

Random killings should be considered terrorism, said former Bucks County prosecutor David Zellis, who handled the case against Donald Traub.

In 1998 and 1999, Traub, of Warminster Township, shot three people at random, killing one woman.

Karen Hordis, a 42-year-old married mother of two from Ivyland, Bucks County, was killed while she was loading groceries into her car at a Giant supermarket in broad daylight, with many people nearby. Traub got out of a car and fired two shots into her back at close range. He shot her twice more after she fell to the ground.

Traub also shot a woman who was walking near her home and a man riding his bike. Police could offer no answers to calm a jittery public.

"The shootings put such a fear into the community," Zellis said. "People were afraid to walk outside of their homes. Everyone was thinking: There but for the grace of God go I."

He called the case chilling because there was no explanation for the shootings.

"These were just ordinary people, with no enemies that we could find, going about their lives and suddenly they're gone. It was completely unpredictable," Zellis said.

In a police station rant that was videotaped and played at his plea hearing, Traub said he shot the victims to get back at society.

"I talk to people and nobody listens to me, so I had to go out and shoot people," he said. "I don't like people."

Random acts unsettle people because they don't make sense. People want explanations for why someone would act so irrationally, said Luksa, the prosecutor handling the Allentown killings. Murder makes more sense if it can be explained that someone killed for love or money or revenge. But the law, he noted, requires no explanation.

"The commonwealth never has to prove why a person committed a crime," Luksa said. "His motivation is his motivation."

Allentown Assistant Chief Bill Lake has handled cases where the victim and the killer didn't know each other, but usually there was a motive or other explanation, such as mistaken identity.

Sondra Yohe, 18, was — like Ketrow, Gray and Ramos — in the wrong place at the wrong time. She and a friend were driving to meet their boyfriends in June 2005 when a single bullet tore through their car as they made a wrong turn down an alley. Yohe died instantly.

Three men who were later convicted in her death admitted they mistook Yohe's car for a drug rival's.